Your Brain on Horror

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8

The month of October is a month when the haunts of demons, anti-life, and negative forces appear to prevail.  Culturally, we experience cyclical October Surprises and Halloween, the holiday of devils.  The Book of Lamentations  on the destruction of the Temple, the Book of Job on pain and suffering, and even the mysterious prophetic Book of Revelation showcasing the wrath of God and return of Jesus Christ can arguably be the Holy Bible's most horrific books.  Why should we take time to study horror when verses abound in the Bible that indicate we should focus on the positive, as in the verse above?  We are entering days in which you will witness and experience horror to the degree no man or woman in history has ever experienced.  We need to understand that the bible does talk about horror and how to prepare ourselves for the horror we shall see.  We can learn from the biblical personages how to endure and be faithful in times of great pain and suffering. 

Horror Activates Physiological Responses in Your Body

Terror trauma sets off an intricate cascade of physiological activities within your body.  If severe enough, all systems in your body will activate to resolve the trauma.

I discovered this when I became a widow suddenly.  The shock of the event activated this cascade and the most noticeable change I saw was that the memory part of my brain, the hippocampus, shut down to preserve the vital organs such as my heart.   I had now idea that the shock of what I had just experienced could be lethal, like 75% lethal.

Horror Activates Fight or Flight Response.  Your hypothalamus activates and signals the adrenal gland injecting you with adrenaline. That is the same body chemical that is used to help you recover from a severe allergic reaction or if your heart stops beating.  The hypothalamus then activates the pituitary gland-signaling the adrenal gland to release cortisol a hormone that keeps you alert, ready for action and prepares for body to deal with injury. 

In the 21st-Century we are facing interference, modulation, and outright destruction of our hypothalamus.  Remember this is the key player in the brain for memory and also the communication center for signaling you body's response to terror or injury. 

  Now What Happens?

A variety of kinds of cells go toward site of the problem.  Platelets release clotting factors; waves of white cells move in to fight infection and reabsorb fragments of damaged cells and non-self materials; epithelial cells, fibroblasts and osteoblasts crawl into position to replace damaged bones and soft tissue and to form scar tissue.  These processes are triggered and regulated by a variety of messages that radiate from the site of disorder.  A wide variety of stimulating and inhibiting factors activate and integrate wound repair until the process of healing is complete.  Fever, allergic reaction, Fight or Flight response are all examples of life-saving systemic regulations that God put in place. 

Many physiological responses are nonlinear because of the intricate web of the whole-body feedback and feed-forward regulatory pathways (superhighways in the body) that are involved. Some activities persist for weeks after injury.  Vital living processes must be maintained during repair.  This may require shifting of functions to other parts, systems or pathways.  Redundancy is vital.  Energy Medicine, James L. Oschman

Sounds (Frequency) Increases Horror

I will never forget one experience that I had during a time of spiritual warfare for a college student.  The warfare was intense and the team that I was on was close to victory.  I was in bed reading about midnight when I heard a screeching-wailing outside the bedroom window.  It was a chilling sound, and not natural at all.  This went on for 4 hours, even with warfare prayer.  The next morning I discovered that victory had indeed be achieved at 4 AM precisely the time the screeching outside my window ceased. 

Unfortunately, today scientists and horror composers are collaborating together using musical tools and frequency to induce fear, both an art form and a science. Sound and frequencies are modulated to use familiar sounds in unusual ways; this distortion of reality unsettles us even if what we’re hearing is, in many ways, obscured.

The sounds that do this to us aren’t always unusual; but their deep rumblings or high-pitched squeals signal danger almost (if not actually) instinctively. Distressed animal calls, women screaming and other nonlinear sounds, which are irregular noises with large wavelengths often found in nature can trigger a biological response. 

One unsettling and hidden sound is infrasound—a low-frequency sound that cannot be heard, but literally unsettles human beings down to our bones. Infrasound, which exists at 19 Hz and below, can be felt, but human ears begin to hear sound at 20 Hz. Infrasound exists in nature, and is created by wind, earthquakes, avalanches, and used by elephants to communicate over long distances. At a high enough volume, it may be possible for humans to perceive sound as low as 12 Hz.

Another way to induce terror is taking a sound out of one normal context and then placing it into a new, scarier one. While some of these sounds are subtle, others stick out so much they become characters themselves.

Tri-Tones produce fear. For a long time, tritone was forbidden in the Western church due to fact of transmitting this tension effect. This dissonance was seen as malignant by the church, because they used to believe that the perfection of God would be translated into harmonic sounds, not in non-harmonics as the tritone.

This concept made that in the Middle Age, the tritone received the name of “diabolus in musica” (devil in music), and it was forbidden to be played (threatening composers to go to bonfire).  Tri-tones have made a resurgence back into the church. The problem may be that the physiological and psychological impact of these disquieting frequencies that promote dissonance may neutralize whatever positive messages that we might be hearing. 

The frequencies, wavelengths, and vibrational energies within your body will either resonate with either God's natural frequencies or with Satanic vibrations in our surrounding environment. 

Screaming Intensifies Horror

If some of the stories within the Bible cause you to instinctively scream, that scream is inducing a Fear Feedback Loop which can be plugged into an algorithm and utilized by AI, heightening your response to horror, in preparation for what is to come to pass. 

“In brain imaging parts of the experiment, screams activate the fear circuitry of the brain,” the author says says. “The amygdala is a nucleus in the brain especially sensitive to information about fear.” That means screams are inherently considered not just sound but a trigger for heightened awareness.

From these screams, Poeppel and his team mapped “roughness,” an acoustic description for how fast a sound changes in loudness. While normal speech modulates between 4 and 5 Hz in sound variation, screams spike between 30 and 150 Hz. The higher the sound variation, the more terrifying the scream is perceived.

Poeppel and his team had volunteers listen to different alarm sounds and found people responded to alarms with similar variations: The more the alarms varied at higher rates, the more terrifying they were judged to be.

That huge variation in scream roughness is a clue to how our brains process danger sounds, Poeppel says. Screaming serves not only to convey danger but also to induce fear in the listener and heighten awareness for both screamer and listener to respond to their environment.  Time

Some sounds are healing and will ripple through your body frequency patterns that form beautiful symmetrical shapes and patterns within your body.  This God given structure is maintained only as long as the complex sound pattern pulses through it.  When the sound stops, the fluid within the cells return to their original shape. 

Science is cracking open the science of sound.  Today you will find various sound therapies.  WARNING! I do not endorse the following because some contain New Age techniques.  That said sound and healing is indisputably from God, so to be aware of the intimacy between sound and healing and that you can use sound for healing and protective from evil. Sound is important in these days.

• Sonopuncture
• Sound tables
• Sentics
• And the very dangerous Brain Machines now known as Virtual Reality where a person uses a light device in goggles embedded with light emitting diodes and ear muffs.  All auditory and visual experiences and sensations come from the machine. 

Genetics Can Increase Horror

Genetics plays a role in your ability or inability to tolerate horror due to polymorphisms in the COMT Gene.

I have inserted some links if you would like to explore this concept on your own.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/genetics-and-stem-cells/the-genetics-of-fear/

PROJECT MUSE

While genetics may play a role in horror tolerance/intolerance, your genetic switches can be activated (turned on) and silenced (turned off) at the will of today's controller's.  While our genetics are hardwired we often express various traits though our RNA, both to our benefit or detriment.  So we are not entirely subject to our DNA.  There are also the spiritual and positive thinking dimensions that impact how we will react. 

Why visit the horror stories embedded within Scripture? 

Scripture provides us with clear illustrations on how to handle and not handle horrific situations in our lives.  We learn through its pages that we can overcome the natural world and its circumstances that we may confront.  We can glean situations that have not yet befallen us but will at some point in our lives, such as dealing with death.  Scripture allows us the benefit to exercise our mindful living skills and our situational awareness as we view things such as supernatural experiences.  For instance, does one bow down to an angel?  No! 

As we peer into the lives of biblical personages we can experience a taste of their lives and as we receive a release of endorphins the body's natural pain-killer and mood altering hormones we can learn to live in the fluidity of our hormones and emotions, even conquering them if the situation requires.

We can learn to let Jesus help us modulate the pulses of happy and positive feelings hormones when we are in stressful situations.  This is important because there is such a thing as stress addiction.  Whether it is good or bad stress, we tend to seek and return to those hormonal injections, over and over again

We can empathize when the biblical persons triumph over their situations alive, known today as the Arousal Transfer Theory which intensifies our empathy, compassion, and positive feelings.

Turning frequently to those scary parts in the Bible also helps us to feel and process these emotions of terror in the safety of your own home or environment.  This allows you time to establish your plan for dealing with these types of situations and emotions in your life. 

Scary Stories from Scripture

 Great Samuel's Ghost

King Saul is a famous king of Israel. He lost his kingdom, and his life, after disobeying God. In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul asks a witch at Endor to "conjure up Samuel," which she does for him.

She claims to see the prophet Samuel rise...but what happens next you'll have to read for yourself - if you dare!

The Monster from the Deep

Much of the sea remains completely unexplored. Technology has not advanced enough to truly explore the depths of the world's oceans, yet what we have discovered can sometimes be the stuff of nightmares.

From these depths, the Lord called upon an enormous beast, sent to teach Job a lesson. If you think you can stomach the tale, read of the monster found in Job 41.

They see dead people

When Christ died on the cross, many things occurred. The veil was torn, the earth shook...and the dead rose.

Imagine the moment Christ passed from this life to the next. Our hearts are breaking and our spirits mourn, then suddenly a mighty earthquake shakes the world and tombs of holy people are breaking open as the bodies within are restored to life!  Read all about it in Matthew 27.

The Hand Without a Body

King Belshazzar offered a wonderful banquet but used the holy items from Jerusalem's temple as common dishes.

In the midst of the feast, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the wall. Kind Belshazzar stared, his face pale, as the disembodied hand continued to write.  Read more in Daniel 5.

An army of demons

Jesus helped many people during his life on Earth. All were broken in one way or another but the truly terrifying ones are those who were possessed.

Christ cast a legion of demons from a man living in a graveyard. What happened next will frighten you to the core!  Read, if you dare, in Mark 5.   Crosswalk

More than Overcomer's! 

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.  Proverbs 25

While it is true we live in a perilous and wicked day we have so many promises from Jesus to help us walk an overcoming lifestyle, no matter the whirlwind surrounding us.  Why peer out at the darkness from under the safety and security of His wings?

• Observing is watching both the obvious and hidden, kind of like a mom with eyes in the back of her head.

• Orientation tells us what we should look for when we’re observing, and then puts those observations into context so we know what to do with the information.

• Deciding-We need to sharpen our decision making including knowing what questions to ask and critical thinking.

• Acting-The good Lord brings us information so that we can do something about it.  Stop wringing your hands and being a victim.  You can change into a formidable person.

How can we become better observers so that we can improve our situational awareness? How should we orient ourselves so that we observe the right things and understand the context for what we’re seeing?

My friends you should  not seek out, nor look at the horror and evils perpetrated by this world and the Satan, except from the pages of Holy Scripture where you can see and experience clearly what you are to do.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  Ephesians 6:12

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  I Peter 5:8

"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ...John 14:1-31

  Thankfully, we have this promise nugget indelibly written for all eternity, that evil will be defeated:

The horror you inspire has deceived you, and the pride of your heart, you who live in the clefts of the rock, who hold the height of the hill. Though you make your nest as high as the eagle's, I will bring you down from there, declares the Lord.  Jeremiah 49:16

Here is a taste of hope and inspiration as a sweet aroma, to linger with you today: Love Grows

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Author Information

Sources:

Crosswalk

http://www.simplifyingtheory.com/tritone/